The Hero of this Book: 'A sublime gift Meg Mason

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A taut, groundbreaking new novel from bestselling and award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken, about a writer's relationship with her larger-than-life mother - and about the very nature of writing A Book of the Year in the New Yorker, Time, NPR, Washington Post, People Magazine and Oprah Daily A taut, groundbreaking new novel about a writer's relationship with her larger-than-life mother - and about the very nature of writing Ten months after her mother's death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book walks across London on a quiet Sunday. The city was a favourite of her mother's, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother's life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future- back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed. The woman, a writer, recalls all that made her complicated mother extraordinary - her brilliant wit, her generosity, her unbelievable obstinacy, her sheer will in seizing life despite physical difficulties - and finds herself wondering how her mother had endured. Even though she wants to respect her mother's nearly pathological sense of privacy, the woman must come to terms with whether making a chronicle of this remarkable life constitutes an act of love or betrayal. The Hero of This Book is a searing examination of grief and renewal, and of a deeply felt relationship between a child and her parents. At once comic and heartbreaking, with prose that surprises at every turn, this is a novel of such piercing love and tenderness that we are reminded that art is what remains when all else falls away.

Reviews

Into a single, most singular novel, McCracken fits everything we adult daughters know and feel and love and fear about our beautiful, complicated mothers, and could never say. A sublime gift.
What could be better value than a book set over one day that you can read in one day, but that will stay in your heart and refuse to go ... One of the greatest memoirs of a parent. * The Times *
Easily one of the best novels (or is it actually a memoir) that will be published this year ... it is touching and funny, and full of sharp-eyed observations about family life and parents and how your childhood forms you. * The Times *
Confirms McCracken as among the finest contemporary chroniclers of everyday life. Like Elizabeth Strout and Ann Patchett, she combines a blistering intelligence with deep humanity... an extraordinarily vivid portrait of an extraordinary - and much beloved - mother. * Guardian *
Her words create an exquisite alchemy that makes a reader ready to follow her anywhere, believe every word she writes down... With every vital, potent sentence, McCracken conveys the electric and primal nature of that first fundamental love. * New York Times *

Author Bio

Elizabeth McCracken is the author of five books, Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry, The Giant's House (a National Book Award finalist), Niagara Falls All Over Again, the memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imag-ination, and Thunderstruck & Other Stories (winner of the 2014 Story Prize, longlisted for the National Book Award). She has received grants and fellow-ships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and she was chosen as one of Granta's 20 Best American Writers Under 40. She has served on the faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently holds the James Michener Chair for Fic-tion at the University of Texas at Austin.